NIThttp://www.nycbuckets.com
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323221486363Cal State Bakersfield’s Cinderella Run Ends In NIT Semifinalshttp://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/cal-state-bakersfields-cinderella-run-ends-in-nit-semifinals/
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 02:07:26 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=28444The dream of back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances died on March 11, 2017, but Cal State Bakersfield and head coach Rod Barnes still did something no team had ever done before.

The Roadrunners, regular season WAC champions, used their automatic bid to the NIT to advance all the way to New York City to play in the semifinals. In doing so CSUB became the first ever 8 seed to make it to Madison Square Garden. (The NIT started seeding the tournament a little over a decade ago.)

Unfortunately for the Roadrunners their dream run through California, Colorado State and UT Arlington ended with a 76-61 loss to Georgia Tech at MSG on Tuesday night.

Senior guard Dedrick Basile led the Roadrunners with 18 points. After hot shooting (including 51% from three) carried CSUB through the first three rounds they shot just 8-23 (35%) from distance against the Yellow Jackets.

“For us to only have seven turnovers against that tough, hardnosed defense that they play is a credit to our guys,” said GT head coach Josh Pastner.

It was definitely because of preparation. Quinton Stephens, who scored 13 points and grabbed 9 rebounds, said that Tech went straight from stretching to press break during practice to help prep for the Roadrunners’ aggressive defense. Freshman forward Josh Okogie was particularly impressive scoring 22 points on 7-18 shooting, and grabbing 9 rebounds.

Georgia Tech, a team that was solidly on the NIT bubble, has benefitted from a rash of upsets and Indiana passing on a home game to make a run all the way to the finals on Thursday night. Nobody expected the Yellow Jackets to be 21-15 this season. Some national pundits were even predicting before the season that Pastner’s squad would go winless in the ACC. (They went 8-10.) GT, which was ranked 154th on the eve of conference play, has now risen all the way to 77th in KenPom and will play for a title. The NIT has been a blessing for the Yellow Jackets.

“Even with us playing in the NIT, we were excited. We wanted to keep playing,” Pastner said.

CSUB was guaranteed a spot in the NIT due to winning the regular-season title in WAC, but the Roadrunners have also made the most of their experience.

“This has been a great run for our team and for the program,” Basile said. “It’s just great opportunities for us and we just came up short. We would like to win it all, but we just ended up coming up short.”

“It’s been great to be with these guys and the coaching staff,” said Jaylin Airington, who scored 12 points. “It’s a great time on the road. We’ve been on the road a lot, and we’re used to it. I’m sad to have it come to an end tonight, but I love these guys and we just enjoyed the moment and enjoyed the process of the season.”

The run has also helped bring CSUB’s name to a national audience. Barnes was the National Coach of the Year with Ole Miss back in 2001 and he’s done a great job building up CSUB, which didn’t even have a conference when he first took the job back in 2011.

“I think people realize who we are now,” Barnes said. “As I told our team, to win almost 50 games in two years is something special. I think people realize now that we’re building a program. That’s where we started six years ago and I think now on a national level people are starting to realize we’ve got a pretty good program here at Bakersfield.”

]]>28444Team Selection And Seeding Is Broken, Here’s How To Fix Ithttp://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/team-selection-and-seeding-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/
http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/team-selection-and-seeding-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/#commentsWed, 15 Mar 2017 14:10:32 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=28386Illinois St. left out of the field completely. Monmouth not even considered. Princeton needing an automatic bid. Wichita St. a 10 seed. Thanks to the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s focus on RPI derivatives (not even the metric itself) the accomplishments by mid-majors are consistently undervalued.

And while RPI broke team selection and seeding, analytics can help fix it.

How should we select teams?

It turns out when you put a committee of people together to make a group decision that they often have different visions of what makes a team the “best” or “most deserving.” It could mean:

The strongest overall resume

The most quality wins

The team that has the best chance of winning the tournament

Right now the committee uses RPI, or some derivative of RPI, to answer all of those questions. But the RPI was developed in the 1980s. Over the last 30 years analytics has dramatically improved, and there are different tools that could help us answer these questions in a much more precise way.

The resume

One of the best ways to help mid-majors get a fairer shake in selection and seeding would be to find a metric that puts their entire schedule on the same footing as that of a power conference team. Illinois St. played 12 games against teams that had an RPI of 200-plus this season and unless they lost those games, which the Redbirds did once, the results are basically ignored. Another bubble team, Vanderbilt, played just three of those games. (Though the Commodores also lost one at Missouri.)

Half of those games Illinois St. played against 200-plus RPI teams were on the road, most of them during Missouri Valley Conference play. Would a bubble team normally win all 12? Only 10? There are metrics that attempt to figure this out.

Wins Above Bubble (or WAB) is one such way of empirically measuring a bubble team’s “resume.” Imagine the Platonic ideal of a bubble team. The idea of WAB is figuring out how much better or worse each team would’ve done versus that bubble team. Seth Burn has written extensively about WAB on his site. It turns out a derivative of WAB, Bubble Percentile, is the best way of evaluating how a bubble team would’ve done against a similar schedule. Seth laid out how WAB would’ve seeded the field and Wichita St. would’ve be a 6 seed, Illinois St. would’ve been in as a 9 and Michigan St. would’ve been the last at-large. The first four out would’ve been TCU, Monmouth, Georgia and Vanderbilt.

Maybe you’d like your resume metric from a large, sport-centric behemoth? If that’s the case than ESPN’s Strength of Record is for you. Strength of Record, which is based on BPI, has Illinois St. with the 45th best resume in the countrym in front of bubble teams such as Marquette, Michigan St. and Vanderbilt. (It’s worth noting that Michigan St., which received a 9 seed really didn’t have a great resume.)

It’s possible to judge a schedule holistically. The committee should start doing just that.

The good wins

What if instead you want to know which teams beat the best teams. That is why the committee uses a team’s wins against the Top 25 and Top 50 of RPI as one of its main criteria. But those numbers are so devoid of context as to contain little meaning.

A fair metric would consider a few things:

The site of the game (home, road, neutral)

The overall record (and not just wins)

A better judge of team quality

All of these things could be accounted for using something like a team’s record in Tier A and Tier B games on KenPom. Last January Ken Pomeroy added a marker for these two tiers of games to the team pages on his site. Here’s how he defines both: “A game in Tier A represents a top 50 opponent adjusting for the location of the game, and Tier B is the same concept for a top 100 opponent.”

Illinois St. went 1-3 in games against Tier A and 4-1 against Tier B. That 5-4 record against top 100 teams looks quite different from the 2-4 record that the Redbirds had against RPI top 100 opponents. Why? Because road wins against Loyola (Ill.), Southern Illinois and Missouri St. are now included when evaluating a team. Those are hard games to win!

Major conference teams will still play more of these types of games. Michigan St., for example, went 4-12 in Tier A games and 5-1 in Tier B games, for a combined record of 9-13. Wins at Nebraska and on a neutral court over Penn St. are now included, appropriately, in their overall resume.

The best team

Of course if all you want are the teams with the best chance of winning the NCAA Tournament, that’s easy! Pick your favorite flavor of scoring margin adjusted metric: KenPom, Sagarin, ESPN’s BPI, Massey, T-Rank. Each of those metrics is telling you who they think are the “best” teams in college basketball if they had to go play a game tomorrow.

To me though this feels like a devaluation of the regular season when picking the teams that deserve to be in the bracket. Even the people who created these metrics would probably shy away from using a straight run down the list to select the bracket. But they’re certainly available to consider. And Ben Alamar wrote a good piece on ESPN about why maybe the committee should use these metrics when seeding. (The gist: A mis-seed of Saint Mary’s hurts not only the Gaels but the rest of that bracket.)

Conclusion

No one analytic is the magic bullet and there is always going to be some bit of human decision-making going on in the commitee room. This is about replacing the giant sledgehammer of RPI with the hammer, screwdriver, and wrench of analytics. And there have been discussions about doing exactly that! (Maybe…) The job will get done either way, but the new way is more precise. Hopefully we can all agree that’s a good thing.

]]>http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/team-selection-and-seeding-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/feed/128386Wrapping Up NIT Bracketologyhttp://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/wrapping-up-nit-bracketology/
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 02:27:34 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=28367The NIT bracket is out and the road to Madison Square Garden begins. Here’s a quick look at the choices the committee made and how projections fared.

The Bubble

Valparaiso and Georgia Tech ultimately made it into the bracket where I had UNC Asheville and Ohio State instead. Thirty of 32 teams is about my running average, so I’m not too excited about it. It’s also always fun when the committee chair comes on ESPNU and says that the two other teams they seriously considered were the two teams in my bracket that were left out. C’est la vie when it comes to bracket projections.

Valparaiso and Georgia Tech each come with their downsides. Valpo will be playing without their best player, Alec Peters, when they head to Champaign, IL to take on Illinois. Georgia Tech has really struggled on the road this season and had an RPI of 106, which makes them one of the highest to get into the field in the past five years. Good news though for Yellow Jacket fans. They lucked into a home game as a No. 6 seed because Indiana can’t host its first round game. Both choices by the committee are certainly defensible.

The Seeding

There were only two teams that I had in the field that I missed by more than 1 seed line: UT Arlington and TCU. UT Arlington, the regular season champion in the Sun Belt, was absolutely screwed. They had in RPI in the mid-40s, were 12-7 against the Top 200 and 22-7 overall, including a win at St. Mary’s during non-conference. But they find themselves going to BYU in the first round.

TCU on the other hand is a fascinating case. The Horned Frogs at one point looked like they might reach NCAA Tournament, but were ultimately done in by a loss to Iowa State in the Big 12 Tournament. This is a team that beat Kansas (albeit a slightly short-handed Kansas team) on a neutral court three days ago. They’ll be an absolute bear for Iowa to play if that’s the second round matchup.

Final Results

After all that though the brackets went relatively smoothly. Paymon scoring is how The Bracket Project scores NCAA Bracketologists and how I like to look at my performance. This season I scored 154 points. That was tops among the three main sites that do NIT Bracketology. The Bracket Project’s NIT Bracket scored 150 and DRatings scored 133.

Other Tournaments:

]]>28367Early Thoughts On The NIT Brackethttp://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/early-thoughts-on-the-nit-bracket/
Sun, 12 Mar 2017 14:55:05 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=28343Late last night as the clocks sprung forward I published my second to last NIT bracket of the season. In the past I’ve had a chance to write up some thoughts about the bracket, but that hasn’t been nearly as easy this season. But I did want to share some of my thinking at this point in the process.

The NIT Bubble

I went over the bubble in some detail yesterday. The main thing that has changed is that Championship Saturday pushed a number of automatic bids into the NIT. We’re now projected at somewhere between nine and 11 automatic bids to the NIT—depending on what happens to Illinois St. and Princeton, which would be slightly below the five-year average (12).

The automatic bids forced some cuts around the bubble and I ultimately had to drop Valparaiso and Davidson out of the bracket. The Davidson cut was relatively easy. The Wildcats just have too many losses to be considered a serious NIT at-large contender. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with Valparaiso’s profile, except that the Crusaders will be without Alec Peters in the NIT and their worst loss came against Milwaukee when Peters was injured. I asked the NCAA how the NIT selection committee might deal with the Peters injury and Jeff Williams from the NCAA had this to say: “Just like the NCAA Committee, the NIT Committee has a great deal of metrics, data and information that it reviews in selecting the teams it invites. Along with the data and metrics the committee uses it also can consider the availability of student-athletes for the Tournament. Each committee member can take that under consideration during the voting process.”

Among the remaining teams I have missing the NIT all have some flaw to point that explains why they won’t get in, which I discussed in more detail in my previous post. One team I didn’t cover in that post was St. Bonaventure. SBU had a nice season, but didn’t beat anyone of consequence along the way. The Bonnies don’t have a Top RPI 100 win all season. That’s what I expect will ultimately keep them out.

And even though it’s UNC Asheville on the 8 seed line it’s the two power conference teams near the bottom of the bracket that I feel least confident about. It’ll be interesting to see how the NIT committee handles Colorado and Ohio St. along with the Mountain West.

Turning Down NIT Bids

Speaking of Ohio St. There has been some chatter that maybe the Buckeyes shouldn’t accept an at-large bid to the NIT if offered. Adam Jardy of The Columbus Dispatch reported on March 9 that the Buckeyes had signed the non-binding postseason agreement. Jardy also wrote that LSU turned down an NIT bid last season, which was popular scuttlebutt after the Tigers released a statement. But I was told by the NCAA that, “LSU was not invited to participate,” and that “since the NCAA has managed the NIT even no team has been invited to the NIT that has not participated,” which both seem to directly contradict that fact.

It is of course entirely possible that LSU communicated to the committee that it did not want to participate in the NIT and thus weren’t invited. But I didn’t expect the Tigers to make the NIT bracket even prior to their statement last season.

Thus, even though Illinois fired John Groce yesterday it seems inconceivable that the Fighting Illini won’t be in the NIT bracket. Illinois has a chance to be in the First Four Out of the NCAA Tournament tomorrow, which would automatically make them a No. 1 seed in the NIT. No team, interim head coach or not, turns down that opportunity. It would be awfully conspicuous and set an odd precedent for the NCAA if Illinois were suddenly not in the tournament. This isn’t happening.

Re-Seeding

Last night’s bracket features this season’s first seed tweak based on geography. Because there are now three automatic bids from the West Coast sitting on the 8 seed line it seems unlikely they all stay there, even though I believe that’s their true seed. Instead of sending Cal St. Bakersfield across the country to play Georgia and UNC Asheville back the other way to play California I just swapped the two. The NIT selection committee has the power to move a team one bracket line from its true seed when it is placed on the bracket to accomodate such a situation. I fully expect they’ll employ that technique if there is a geographically unbalanced First Four Out tonight.

Enjoy the last few games. Expect the final NIT bracket tonight after the NCAA Selection Show.

]]>28343The NIT Bubble Nowhttp://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/03/the-nit-bubble-now/
Sat, 11 Mar 2017 01:54:50 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=28302Selection Sunday is getting extremely close and the number of automatic bids to the NIT is extremely low at the moment. (Still a long way to go!)

That means that the NIT bubble is extremely robust. All those open spots are leaving opportunities for a plethora of teams to make legitimate claims to an at-large position. The way I see it there are currently 13 teams vying for (currently) seven spots in the NIT. Because I’m making a few dramatic changes in tonight’s bracket I wanted to lay out my logic in a bit more detail.

Let’s put them into groups.

Major Conference Teams

Includes: Colorado, Texas A&M, Georgia Tech

You can add Ohio St. to this group if you want and say that there are 14 teams vying for eight spots, but I think the Buckeyes, despite Thad Matta not committing to playing, are relatively safe. (And they’ll play if invited.)

Colorado is the only one of these three teams currently in my bracket. The Buffaloes will finish with an RPI in the high-90s and an 18-14 record against Division I opponents. Colorado is 9-4 since starting the season 10-10 and I expect that progress, along with wins over Oregon, California and Xavier might be enough to sneak into the bracket.

Good wins are where Georgia Tech’s profile excels, but that’s partly because the Yellow Jackets had so many opportunities in the ACC. A lack of road wins plus a 10-15 overall record against the Top 200 puts them squarely on the bubble. Teams like that have made the NIT in the past, but they’ve also been left out. It may be that GT’s 263rd ranked non-conference schedule could be what ultimately does them in.

Texas A&M played difficult non-conference and conference schedules, which is why the Aggies are currently 16-15 and still hanging around the NIT bubble. They have 13 losses to teams in the Top 50 of the RPI. But 2-13 against the Top 50 and 4-14 against the Top 100 shows they’re probably not a postseason basketball team.

The Atlantic 10

Includes: Richmond, Davidson, George Washington, George Mason

This is the second tier of the Atlantic 10 behind the Dayton, VCU, Rhode Island trio that is battling for NCAA Tournament positioning. A few of them are likely to make the NIT. Davidson did itself a big favor today by beating Dayton, but the Wildcats are still just 9-14 against the RPI Top 200 (4-12 vs. Top 100). Richmond tied for third during the A-10 regular season and looks to have the best overall profile. GW and GMU are both a little off the edge. GMU needed to beat VCU today to be taken seriously, but the the Colonials can still help themselves with a win over Richmond tonight.

The Mountain West

Includes: San Diego St., New Mexico

Fresno St. and Boise St. could also be in this group, but the I believe that the profiles for the Bulldogs and Broncos are better than their conference brethren. SDSU just blew out Boise in the MWC tournament, but has some really questionable losses. Of course the Aztecs are still playing, a win over Colorado St. later tonight would definitely help. New Mexico went 0-6 in their games against Top 50 RPI teams, which is probably why the Lobos will miss out on the NIT, though they have the better RPI.

The Mid-Majors

Includes: Valparaiso, UNC Asheville, San Francisco, New Mexico St.

The Horizon, Big South and West Coast conference tournaments have all already finished, so there’s nothing left for Valpo, UNCA and USF to do except wait. Valparaiso is 4-3 against the Top 100, but will be without Alec Peters—who was injured late in the season. The Crusaders lost an ugly game, 43-41 in the Horizon League tournament without him. How the committee decides to handle Peters’s injury will determine Valpo’s NIT fate, which makes them potentially the toughest team to project in the bracket. UNCA’s best wins are at Furman and Elon, but the Bulldogs are an interesting team that went 15-3 in the Big South before being upset by Campbell in the conference tournament. San Francisco went 10-8 in the WCC and beat Utah and Illinois State on neutral courts in non-conference, but failed to beat any of the WCC’s top three during conference play. One win might’ve been enough, but it looks like Kyle Smith’s new team will fall just short.

Then there’s New Mexico St. Depending on who you ask the Aggies might be the favorite in the WAC tournament. If they win the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament then this whole exercise is moot, as Cal St. Bakersfield would get an automatic NIT bid. But if that doesn’t happen it will be interesting to see how the committee handles NMSU gaudy record (currently 26-5) with basically only winning at Arizona St. as proof of being able to win difficult games on the road. (Note: NMSU also beat New Mexico, Samford, and UC Irvine at home.)

That’s it. It will definitely be interesting to see how it all shakes out—and if any other team manages to steal an automatic bid before the weekend is out.

]]>28302NIT Bracketology: February 27http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-bracketology-february-27/
http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-bracketology-february-27/#commentsMon, 27 Feb 2017 13:30:01 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=27962Now this gets real. A number of mid-majors have determined their league champion. There’s only one week of major conference play remaining and the bracket is getting much clearer.

Well, sort of. The NCAA Tournament bubble is still very much a work in progress. It’s unclear to me why people think this is a “bad” bubble. There are a number of strong teams with different weaknesses on their resume, which is what happens every season.

I’ve had particular trouble figuring out what to do with the Big East teams hanging out around the cutline. (And fading Xavier could be there soon.) Right now I have both Marquette and Seton Hall in the First Four. Another team that’s fading is Northwestern. The Wildcats have lost five of their past seven games. Their last two—hosting Michigan and Purdue—offer two more opportunities for key victories. Even if Northwestern was to lose both, the Wildcats would most likely make the tournament barring an early flameout in the Big Ten Tournament.

Near the NCAA bubble though the biggest outlier decisions I made were to include Houston and Illinois St. in the bracket. Houston is probably the most controversial. UH is 38th in KenPom and 5-0 against “B” games and 0-5 in “A” games. My concern is eventually that might not be good enough. Though if the Cougars beat Cincinnati on the road on Thursday that would be a big step in the right direction. Quite frankly, Illinois St. should be in the bracket, even if the schedule wasn’t ideal. If you’re putting TCU in the bracket above ISU based on a game played on Nov. 21 you’re crazy. I think the Redbirds are clearly one of the nation’s 36 best at-large teams.

The bottom of the NIT is a little messy too. That’s partly because teams like UNC Asheville and Valparaiso have been added to the bracket. Both narrowly missed out on winning their conference titles and will have to play on the road to take home a tournament championship. They have resumes that definitely will be intriguing for the committee. College of Charleston, the second best team in the CAA and a serious contender for the tournament title, and New Mexico St. are two other mid-majors that nobody might be talking about, but are quite deserving.

Then there’s BYU. The Cougars were starting to fall out of the bracket, but their victory over previously undefeated Gonzaga is an excellent capstone to the season. Despite some questionable losses it seems highly unlikely that BYU would get left out at this point.

The updates will be coming to the Current NIT Bracketology page on a more regular basis now, including when teams are granted automatic bids to the tournament. Stay tuned later in the week.

]]>http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-bracketology-february-27/feed/1727962An NIT Selection Trends FAQhttp://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-selection-trends-faq/
http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-selection-trends-faq/#commentsTue, 14 Feb 2017 14:04:02 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=27789During the course of NIT Bracketology I’m often asked a number of questions about the process. Using data I pulled from on NIT participants for the past five seasons I took at some trends I think would be most useful for current observers.

How many automatic bids are going to be handed out?

There have been 61 automatic bids to the NIT in the past five seasons, an average of 12 per. The Ivy League moving to a conference tournament means there is the possibility of one more being given out. Assume that the 8 seeds will all be automatic bids (that’s happened every season) and all of the 7 seeds will be as well (that’s happened every season besides 2012). Last season there were 15 automatic bids to the NIT, the most in this sample. That’s partly because teams like Monmouth, Valparaiso, San Diego State and Saint Mary’s didn’t receive at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament. But those teams being upset in their respective conference tournaments still meant that fewer at-large teams were going to sneak into the bottom of the bracket.

Is there anything else I should know about automatic bids?

About one fifth (12, or 2.5/season) of the teams that received automatic bids were given home games in the first round. The average RPI of automatic bid team is 101 with a 71 percent win percentage, so these teams aren’t pushovers.

Can [insert team here] get in with a .500 record?

It’s within the rules for NIT selection that a team could even get in even with a record under .500, but no team with a record of .500 or below has been given an at-large berth to the NIT in the past five seasons. It’s possible that Pittsburgh or Georgetown could stretch the bounds of reality this season, but I wouldn’t recommend pushing it. Two teams have made it with a record just 1-game above .500: Iowa at 17-16 in 2012 and St. John’s at 16-15 in 2013. Both teams ended up winning their first round games.

Alright, what about if our RPI is high?

That Iowa team in 2012 also has the highest RPI of any at-large team to make the NIT in the past five seasons at 125. The Hawkeyes were 17-16 (8-10 in the Big Ten) and lost to Campbell in non-conference, but also beat four ranked teams during Big Ten play. They are definitely the exception. Beyond that, the highest RPI for at-large consideration is right around 100, which makes sense considering that there are 100 teams between the NCAA Tournament (68) and NIT (32).

Is that true for teams from every conference?

Nope. That RPI guidance is much more useful if you’re from a high-major conference or the Atlantic 10. Otherwise the magic number is closer to 90. The only team from outside those conferences to get an at-large bid with an RPI above 90 in the past five season was Illinois State back in 2012.

Can you give us a sense where we might be seeded based on RPI?

As much as the committee wants to say that more goes into team selection, historically the RPI does a reasonably good job of projecting a team’s seeding. The average RPI for at-large bids by seed the past five seasons demonstrates that concept:

Seed. Average RPI:

1. 57
2. 62
3. 68
4. 73
5. 77
6. 72
7. 99

Why does it drop for six seeds?

That’s where the committee likes to put strong mid-majors. For instance two mid-majors with RPIs in the 40s (Toledo in 2014 and Princeton in 2016) were given six seeds. Of the 14 at-large bids given to six seeds in the past five seasons 10 were given to mid-majors. UT-Arlington, Memphis and BYU are all teams that might find themselves in that area this season.

Do mid-majors get at-large bids?

Sure, sometimes. Of the 99 at-large bids given out during the sample, 30 went to teams outside the high-major conferences and the Atlantic 10. That means 30 percent of bids go to mid-majors. It’s heavily dependent on the season of course. Forty-five percent of at-large bids went to mid-majors in 2015, but that was certainly an anomaly.

I hope this has been helpful. Please let me know if there are any other questions I can answer about the history of the selection process in the comments.

]]>http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-selection-trends-faq/feed/727789NIT Bracketology: Feb. 13, 2017http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-bracketology-feb-13-2017/
http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-bracketology-feb-13-2017/#commentsMon, 13 Feb 2017 13:30:43 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=27778Now it’s getting real. There is just a month until Selection Sunday and the resumes are starting to solidify.

The NCAA Tournament bubble is still a mess. Any of the teams in the top three seeds could make a run into the bracket. It’s particularly hard to figure out how the committee will deal with Illinois State. The RPI is excellent, but the schedule is mediocre at best.

Around .500

In the middle of the bracket there are a few teams that are flirting with the magical .500 cutoff line. Georgetown and Pittsburgh will probably be in the NIT if they stay above that line, both have some solid wins and played extremely difficult schedules, but whether they actually finish there is still in doubt. KenPom has Georgetown finishing 16-15 (7-11 Big East) and Pittsburgh at 16-15 (5-13 ACC). Some untimely losses or a 1-and-done stint in their respective conference tournaments would probably be enough to drop either team from consideration. For now though they’re hanging around the middle of the bracket.

Two other Big Ten teams are hanging out around the bottom of the bracket: Penn State and Illinois. The Nittany Lions swept the Illini. Both are projected to finish just 16-15 (though PSU at 8-10 Big Ten and Illinois at 6-12). Because Penn State has won more games in Big Ten play its resume is a little stronger, which is why I have the Nittany Lions further away from the bubble.

The Mid-Majors

The other intriguing teams to me? BYU (18-9, 11-7) is the West Coast Conference’s third best team. But the Cougars also have losses to Utah Valley, San Diego and Pepperdine, and their best win is either at the very beginning of the season versus Princeton or in December versus Colorado. BYU could really use to knock off Saint Mary’s or Gonzaga down the stretch. UT Arlington should probably be my projected Sun Belt champion, but they have some work to do in conference play. At a projected Top 50 RPI and currently 69th in KenPom I’m intrigued if that team is in the NIT at-large discussion. They can of course end that by getting the top seed in the conference tournament.

The Mess That Is The AAC

Finally, Temple, Memphis and UCF demonstrate the complexity of evaluating the American Athletic Conference this season. The AAC has a clear top two (SMU / Cincinnati) and Houston, while a step behind, looks like a bubble NCAA team. Then there’s a complicated third tier with Memphis, Connecticut, Tulsa, UCF, and Temple. The Huskies have a brutal schedule down the stretch and Tulsa just isn’t that good (128 in KenPom). Both could easily finish below .500 and aren’t in this bracket. Memphis beat Iowa, Oklahoma, and South Carolina and they don’t have any particularly bad losses. The Tigers are probably the closest thing the AAC has to an NIT lock—and I might have them too low currently. Temple is 14-12 currently, but has an easy schedule down the stretch, swept Memphis and beat West Virginia and Florida State on neutral courts early in the season. If the Owls close strong expect to see them in the NIT as well. Then there’s UCF. The Knights, in Johnny Dawkins’s first season, are a nice story, but they played a weak non-conference schedule and their only really good win is home against Houston. Still, they sneak into the bottom of this bracket. It’s unlikely they’ll stay there.

Without further ado here’s the bracket. Happy to discuss any questions in the comments.

]]>http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/02/nit-bracketology-feb-13-2017/feed/3327778NIT Bracketology: January 30, 2017http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/01/nit-bracketology-january-30-2017/
http://www.nycbuckets.com/2017/01/nit-bracketology-january-30-2017/#commentsMon, 30 Jan 2017 13:30:11 +0000http://www.nycbuckets.com/?p=27630Now that it’s almost February, it’s time for another round of NIT Bracketology. This is the first official, hand-curated bracket from NYC Buckets this season.

One of the important reminders is that teams in the 7 and 8 seed lines—and potentially even the 6 line—are bubble teams because those spots could be handed out to small conference champions that don’t win their conference tournament. There are typically between 8 to 12 of those teams each season.

In addition, one of the interesting things is the current “West Coast bias” of the backend of the bracket. There are a number of teams from the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones in the bottom three seed lines. It would be interesting to see what the committee did under those circumstances in terms of getting geographically sound matchups.

The hand-curated update notably changes the fortunes of two teams. Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt were three and four seeds respectively in my last computerized bracket, but drop out of the field here entirely because I’m not sure they’ll finish above .500.

A big drop inside the bracket comes from BYU, but I tend to underrate the Cougars relative to how the committee has treated them in the past (I’m not sure why). Another team to watch is Chattanooga. A recent two-game losing streak has slid the Mocs entirely out of this bracket despite being ranked 81st in KenPom, which is ahead of teams like Penn St., Ole Miss and Charleston. If Matt McCall’s team was to close the season strong there’s still a chance they could earn an NIT berth.

And now the bracket. Expect another one in two weeks and then at least weekly until Selection Sunday.

I took Drew Cannon’s Easy Bubble Solver and used it to take a look at what the NIT field might look like—assuming all the highest ranked KenPom teams win their conference tournaments. (I’m using projected RPI from RPI Forecast and the current KenPom ranking in case you’re curious.) The tool isn’t necessarily designed for this case—and it’s super early in the season—but it’s still gives a good sense for which power conference teams might be in more trouble than you think early in the season.

The biggest surprise in this bracket for me was just how far down in the pecking order Maryland finds itself. The Terrapins are projected to finish around 95th in RPI, even though they’re currently 7-1 (6-1 against Division I opponents). The discrepancy between Maryland’s record and its status in KenPom (64th, 9th in the Big Ten) is causing some big disagreements with Bracketologists. The Terrapins are a 10 seed in Joe Lunardi’s current bracket, but a six seed in the projected bracket below.

Another major conference team that the NCAA Bracketologists seem to be higher on than the EBS is Colorado. The Buffaloes are currently an 11 seed in Lunardi, but a 5 seed in the NIT here. Colorado’s Pac-12 conferencemate California is also higher in Lunardi’s bracket. The Golden Bears are a 2 seed in the NIT via the EBS, but in the First Four in Lunardi’s.

Also, Shaka Smart is going to have a lot of work to do if Texas wants to make the NCAA tournament, right now even the NIT seems like a bit of a challenge. The Longhorns are 70th in KenPom and have a projected RPI of 126th.

Considering that the final 8-12 spots in the NIT bracket will likely be taken by top seeds that lose in their conference tournament, some big name teams could end up missing the postseason altogether.